In
1993 American scholar Deborah
Lipstadt published
Denying
the
Holocaust,
product of a research contract
funded by an Israeli agency.
British writer David Irving
claims
that it libels him.

All
hyperlinks are added by this Website and are not
part of the original document

1996.--I.--N.

In the High Court of
Justice

QUEEN'S BENCH
DIVISION

Between

DAVID JOHN CAWDELL
IRVING

Plaintiff

and

PENGUIN BOOKS
LIMITED

First
Defendants

DEBORAH E.
LIPSTADT

Second
Defendant

[...]

Statement of Claim

The
Parties to the Action

1. The Plaintiff is a well known writer and at
all times material to this action a reputable
historian and publisher wholly or largely dependent
since 1961 on his income from writing publishing
and marketing books and from lecturing at home and
overseas on topics of modern history. He is the
author of several works of biography including
one
entitled Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third
Reich.

2. The First Defendants carry on business as a
well known and reputable company publishing books
under a number of different imprints including the
imprint "a Plume Book" which books are disseminated
sold or offered for sale in bookstores and other
outlets throughout the jurisdiction of this
Honourable Court.

3. The Second Defendant is a religious
instructor at a college in the State of Georgia in
the United States of America who engages in
activities of a journalistic character and who
delivers speeches to audiences in the said United
States of America and in Australia and in Canada
and in other countries. She is the author of a book
entitled Denying the Holocaust sub-titled
The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
(hereinafter: The Work) which was first published
outside the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court
in or about the year 1993 and which the First
Defendants published or caused to be published
disseminated sold or offered for sale to the public
generally within the jurisdiction of this
Honourable Court in or about the month July of the
year 1994 to the whole of which Work the Plaintiff
will refer at the trial of this action.

[Paragraphs 4
to 7, omitted here, identify the third to
seventh defendants, booksellers, all of whom
have since agreed terms with Mr Irving on which
he ended his action against them.]

8. In the said Work the Second Defendant did
falsely and recklessly write and publish to the
First Defendants and did cause them to publish as
they did falsely and recklessly the following words
defamatory of and concerning the Plaintiff and of
him in the way of his said calling:

Cover and Title Page:

"Denying
the Holocaust"

"The Growing
Assault on Truth and Memory"

Page 14:

The confluence
between anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and Holocaust
denial forces was exemplified by a world
anti-Zionist conference scheduled for Sweden in
November 1992. Though canceled at the last
minute by the Swedish government, scheduled
speakers included black Muslim leader Louis
Farrakhan, Faurisson, Irving and Leuchter. Also
scheduled to participate were representatives of
a variety of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel
organizations, including the Russian group
Pamyat, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, and the
fundamentalist Islamic organization
Hamas.1

Page 111:

Nolte
contended that Weizmann's official declaration
at the outbreak of hostilities gave Hitler good
reason "to be convinced of his enemies'
determination to annihilate him much earlier
than when the first information about Auschwitz
came to the knowledge of the
world."2 [...] When
Nolte was criticized on this point in light of
prewar Nazi persecution of Jews, he said that he
was only quoting David Irving, the right-wing
writer of historical works. How

quoting Irving
justified using such a historically invalid
point remains unexplained
[...].3 As we shall
see in subsequent chapters, Irving [...]
has become a Holocaust denier.

These works
demonstrate how deniers misstate, misquote,
falsify statistics, and falsely attribute
conclusions to reliable sources. They rely on
books that directly contradict their arguments,
quoting in a manner that completely distorts the
authors' objectives. Deniers count on the fact
that the vast majority of readers will not have
access to the documentation or make the effort
to determine how they have falsified or
misconstrued information.

Page 161:

At the second
trial Christie and Faurisson
were joined by David Irving, who flew to Toronto
in January 1988 to assist in the preparation of
Zundel's second defense and to testify on his
behalf. Scholars have described Irving as a
"Hitler partisan wearing blinkers" and have
accused him of distorting evidence and
manipulating documents to serve his own
purposes.4 He is best known
for his thesis that Hitler did not know about
the Final Solution, an idea that scholars have
dismissed.5 The prominent
British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper depicted
Irving as a man who "seizes on a small and
dubious part particle of 'evidence,'" using it
to dismiss far-more-substantial evidence that
may not support his thesis. His work has been
described as "closer to theology or mythology
than to history," and he has been accused of
skewing documents and misrepresenting data in
order to reach historically untenable
conclusions, particularly those that exonerate
Hitler.6 An ardent admirer of
the Nazi leader, Irving placed a self-portrait
of Hitler over his desk, described his visit to
Hitler's mountaintop retreat as a spiritual
experience,7 and declared that
Hitler repeatedly reached out to help the
Jews.8 In 1981 Irving, a
self-described
"moderate fascist," established his own
right-wing political party, founded on his
belief that he was meant to be a future leader
of Britain.9 He is an
ultra-nationalist who believes that Britain has
been on a steady path of decline accelerated by
its misguided decision to launch a war against
Nazi Germany. He has advocated that Rudolf Hess
should have received the Nobel Prize for his
efforts to try to stop war between Britain and
Germany.10 On some level
Irving seems to conceive himself as carrying on
Hitler's legacy.

[...] Prior
to participating in Zundel's trial, Irving had
appeared at IHR conferences [...] but he
had never denied the annihilation of the
Jews.11 That changed in 1988
as a result of the events in Toronto.

Both Irving and
Faurisson advocated inviting an American prison
warden who had performed gas executions to
testify in Zundel's defense, arguing that this
would be the best tactic for proving that the
gas chambers were a fraud and too primitive to
operate safely. They solicited help from Bill
Armontrout, warden of the Missouri State
Penitentiary, who agreed to testify and
suggested they also contact Fred A.
Leuchter,
an "engineer" residing in Boston who specialized
in constructing and installing execution
apparatus. Irving and Faurisson immediately flew
off to meet Leuchter. Irving, who had long
hovered on the edge of Holocaust denial,
believed that Leuchter's testimony could provide
the documentation he needed to prove the
Holocaust a myth.12 According
to Faurisson, when he first met Leuchter, the
Bostonian accepted the "standard notion of the
'Holocaust.'"13 After spending
two days with him, Faurisson declared that
Leuchter was convinced that it was chemically
and physically impossible for the Germans to
have conducted gassings.14
Having agreed to serve as an expert witness for
the defense, Leuchter then went to Toronto to
meet with Zundel and Christie and to examine the
materials they had gathered for the
trial.

Page 179:

David Irving,
who during the Zundel
trial declared
himself converted by Leuchter's work to
Holocaust denial and to the idea that the gas
chambers were a myth, described himself as
conducting a "one-man intifada" against the
official history of the
Holocaust.15

In his
foreword
to his publication of the Leuchter Report,
Irving wrote that there was no doubt as to
Leuchter's "integrity" and "scrupulous methods."
He made no mention of Leuchter's lack of
technical expertise or of the many holes that
had been poked in his findings. Most important,
Irving wrote, "Nobody likes to be swindled,
still less where considerable sums of money are
involved." Irving identified Israel as the
swindler, claiming that West Germany had given
it more than ninety billion deutsche marks in
voluntary reparations, "essentially in atonement
for the 'gas chambers of Auschwitz.'" According
to Irving the problem was that the latter was a
myth that would "not die
easily."16 He subsequently set
off to promulgate Holocaust denial notions in
various countries. Fined
for doing so in

Germany, in
his court room appeal
against his fine he called on the court to
"fight a battle for the German people and put an
end to the blood lie of the Holocaust which has
been told against this country for fifty years."
He dismissed the memorial
to the dead at Auschwitz as a "tourist
attraction."17 He traced the
origins of the myth to an "ingenious plan" of
the British Psychological Warfare Executive,
which decided in 1942 to spread the propaganda
story that Germans were "using 'gas chambers' to
kill millions of Jews and other
'undesirables.'18

Branding Irving and
Leuchter "Hitler's heirs," the British House of
Commons denounced
the former as a "Nazi propagandist and long time
Hitler apologist" and the latter's report as a
"fascist publication." One
might have assumed that would have marked the
end of Irving's reputation in England, but it
did not. Condemned in the Times of London
in 1989 as "a man for whom Hitler is something
of a hero and almost everything of an innocent
and for whom Auschwitz is a Jewish deception,"
Irving may have had his reputation revived in
1992 by the London Sunday
Times.19 The paper hired
Irving to translate the Goebbels
diaries, which
had been discovered in a Russian archive and, it
was assumed, would shed light on the conduct of
the Final Solution. The paper paid Irving a
significant sum plus a percentage of the
syndication fees.*

[footnote]
* The Russian archives granted Irving
permission to copy two microfiche plates,
each of which held about forty-five pages of
the diaries. Irving immediately violated his
agreement, took many plates, transported them
abroad, and had them copied without archival
permission. There is serious concern in
archival circles that he may have
significantly damaged the plates when he did
so, rendering them of limited use to
subsequent researchers. Irving believes Jews are "very
foolish not to abandon the gas chamber theory
while they still have time." He "foresees
[a] a new wave of anti-semitism" due
to Jews' exploitation of the Holocaust
"myth." C.C. Aronsfeld, "Holocaust
revisionists are Busy in Britain,"
Midstream, Jan. 1993. p.29.

Journalists
and scholars alike were shocked that the
Times chose such a discredited figure to
do this work. Showered with criticism, the
editor of the Sunday Times , Andrew Neil,
denounced Irving's views as "reprehensible" but
defended engaging Irving because he was only
being used as a "transcribing technician." Peter
Pulzer, a professor of politics at Oxford and an
expert on the Third Reich, observed that it was
ludicrous for Neil to refer to Irving as a "mere
technician," arguing that when you hired someone
to edit a "set of documents others had not seen
you took on the whole
man."20

However the matter
is ultimately resolved, the Sunday Times
has rescued Irving's reputation from the
ignominy to which it had been consigned by the
House of Commons. In the interest of a
journalistic scoop, this British paper was
willing to throw its task as a gatekeeper of the
truth and of journalistic ethics to the winds.
By resuscitating Irving's reputation, it also
gave new life to the Leuchter
Report.

Page 181:

A similar
attitude is evident in the
media
reviews of
David Irving's books: Most rarely address his
neofascist or denial
connections.21

Irving is one of the
most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust
denial. Familiar with historical evidence, he
bends it until it conforms with his ideological
leanings and political agenda. A man who is
convinced that Britain's great decline was
accelerated by its decision to go to war with
Germany, he is most facile at taking accurate
information and shaping it to confirm his
conclusions. A review of his recent book,
Churchill's
War,which appeared in New York Review of
Books, accurately analyzed his practice of
applying a double standard to evidence. He
demands "absolute documentary proof" when it
comes to proving the Germans guilty, but he
relies on highly circumstantial evidence to
condemn the Allies.22 This is
an accurate description not only of Irving's
tactics, but of those of deniers in
general.

Page 213:

As we have
seen above, Nolte, echoing David Irving, argues
that the Nazi "internment" of Jews was justified
because of Chaim Weizmann's September 1939
declaration that the Jews of the world would
fight Nazism.

Another legal
maneuver has been adopted by a growing number of
countries. They have barred entry rights to
known deniers. David Irving, for example, has
been barred from Germany, Austria, Italy, and
Canada.Australia
is apparently also considering barring
him.23

The
Natural or Ordinary Meaning of the Words Complained
of

9. In the premises the said words as thus
published by the First and Second Defendants and as
offered for dissemination distribution and sale to
the public generally by the Third and Fourth and
Fifth and Sixth Defendants in the context of the
said article meant and were intended and understood
to mean

(i) that the Plaintiff is a
dangerous spokesperson for Holocaust denial
forces who deliberately and knowingly consorts
and consorted with anti-Israel, anti-Semitic,
and Holocaust denial forces and who contracted
to attend a world anti-Zionist conference in
Sweden in November 1992 thereby agreeing to
appear in public in support of and alongside
violent and extremist speakers including
representatives of the violent and extremist
anti-Semitic Russian group Pamyat and of the
Iranian-backed Hezbollah and of the
fundamentalist Islamic organization Hamas and
including the black Muslim minister Louis
Farrakhan, born Louis Eugene Walcott, who is
known as a Jew-baiting black agitator, as a
leader of the U.S. Nation of Islam, as an
admirer of Hitler and who is in the pay of
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi;

(ii) that the Plaintiff is an
historian who has inexplicably misled academic
historians like Ernst Nolte into quoting
historically invalid points contained in his
writings and who applauds the internment of Jews
in Nazi concentration camps;

(iii) that the Plaintiff routinely
perversely and by way of his profession but
essentially in order serve his own reprehensible
purposes ideological leanings and/or political
agenda

distorts accurate historical evidence and
information

misstates

misconstrues

misquotes

falsifies statistics

falsely attributes conclusions to
reliable sources

manipulates documents

wrongfully quotes from books that
directly contradict his arguments

in such in a manner as completely to
distort their authors' objectives

and while counting on the ignorance or
indolence of the majority of

readers not to realise this;

(iv) that the Plaintiff is an Adolf Hitler
partisan who wears blinkers and skews documents
and misrepresents data in order to reach
historically untenable conclusions specifically
those that exonerate Hitler;

(v) that the Plaintiff is an ardent
admirer of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and
conceives himself as carrying on Hitler's
criminal legacy and has placed a self-portrait
of Hitler over his desk and has described a
visit to Hitler's mountaintop retreat as a
spiritual experience and has described himself
as a moderate fascist;

(vi) that before Zundel's trial began
in 1988 in Toronto the Plaintiff , compromising
his integrity as an historian and in an attempt
to pervert the course of

justice, and one Faurisson wrongfully
and/or fraudulently conspired together to invite
an American prison warden and thereafter one
Fred A. Leuchter an engineer who is depicted by
the Defendants as a charlatan to testify as a
tactic for proving that the gas chambers were a
myth.

(vii) that the Plaintiff after
attending Zundel's trial in 1988 in Toronto
having previously hovered on the brink now
denies the murder by the Nazis of the Jews;

(viii) that the Plaintiff described
the memorial to the dead at Auschwitz as a
"tourist attraction."

(ix) that the Plaintiff was branded by
the British House of Commons as "Hitler's heir"
and denounced as a "Nazi propagandist and long
time Hitler apologist" and accused by them of
publishing a "fascist publication" and that this
marked the end of the Plaintiff's reputation in
England.

(x) that some other person had
discovered in a Russian archive in 1992 the
Goebbels diaries and that it was assumed that
these would shed light on the conduct of the
Final Solution but that the Plaintiff was hired
and paid a significant sum by the London
Sunday Times to transcribe and translate
them although he was a discredited and
ignominious figure and although by hiring the
Plaintiff the newspaper threw its task as a
gatekeeper of the truth and of journalistic
ethics to the winds and although there was
thereby increased the danger that the Plaintiff
would in order serve his own reprehensible
purposes misstate misconstrue misquote falsify
distort and/or manipulate these sets of
documents which others had not seen in order to
propagate his reprehensible views and that the
Plaintiff was unfit to perform such a function
for this newspaper.

(xi) that the Plaintiff violated an
agreement with the Russian archives and took and
copied many plates without permission causing
significant damage to them and rendering them of
limited use to subsequent researchers.

The
True Innuendo of the Words Complained
of

10. The Plaintiff will show at the hearing of
this action that the true or legal innuendo of the
words "Holocaust denier" is that any person
described as such wilfully perversely and with
disregard to all the existing historical evidence
denied and continues to deny all and any occurrence
of one of the worst crimes known to history namely
the mass murder by whatever means by Hitler's
agents and their associates of the Jewish people
and hence genocide and hence a crime against
humanity.

11. The Plaintiff will show at the hearing of
this action that the true or legal innuendo of the
word "Hezbollah" is that used to refer to and
describe a known international terrorist
organisation led by one Sayed Hassan Nasrallah from
Beirut in the Lebanon also known as the Hizbollah
whose guerrillas kill Israeli civilians and
soldiers thereby deliberately provoking
retaliations and which organisation has been
determined by President Clinton at the
international anti-terrorism conference in 1996 as
being among the enemies of peace and whose
officials and armed activists are now being hunted
down by death squads code named EGOZ (Hebrew for
Almond) formed by the Israeli army.

12. The Plaintiff will show at the hearing of
this action that the true or legal innuendo of the
words "Hamas" is that of an Islamic fundamentalist
terrorist organisation similar in nature to the
Hezbollah.

13. The Plaintiff will show at the hearing of
this action that the true or legal innuendo of the
words otherwise complained of hereinbefore as being
published in the Work is that he is a person unfit
to be allowed access to archival collections; and
that he is a person who should properly be banned
from foreign countries regardless of the effect
this will have on the lawful exercise of his
profession.

The
Damage is of a Lasting Nature

14. The Work complained of is a book purportedly
of a non-fiction nature and not a transient
newspaper article or radio or television broadcast.
The libel is therefore of a character which lasts
long after the actual date of publication
dissemination sale or offering for sale of the
libel or libels by the Defendants.

The
Plaintiff is entitled to Aggravated
Damages

15. In justification of a claim for aggravated
damages the Plaintiff will rely on the following
facts:

(i) the Second Defendant has pursued a
sustained malicious vigorous well-funded and
reckless world-wide campaign of personal
defamation against the Plaintiff including in
the United States of America and in Canada and
in Australia and in New Zealand for several
years without regard to cost; and

(ii) the Second Defendant published the words
complained of maliciously and without any
attempt at verification although the Plaintiff
is well-known for affording every assistance to
colleagues and inquirers regardless of their
views; and

(iii) the Second Defendant continued and
continues despite having been informed by
solicitors for the first defendant of the
commencement of these proceedings maliciously to
publish the same similar or graver defamations
against the Plaintiff which were widely quoted
in the media and will be held during the trial
of this action to have contributed to the
revoking of a lawful agreement reached between
the Plaintiff and his American publishers to
publish the Plaintiff's above-mentioned
biography Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third
Reich thereby causing him actual pecuniary
loss.

Summary

8. By reason of the premises the Plaintiff

has been brought into hatred ridicule
contempt risk of personal injury and/or
assassination and

has suffered damage to his reputation in his
said calling as an historian and writer and
publisher and

has suffered injury to his feelings

and claims

damages including aggravated damages
for libel; and

an injunction restraining the defendants and
each of them whether by themselves their
servants or agents or otherwise from further
publishing or causing to be published the said
or similar words defamatory of the
Plaintiff.

signed

David John
Cawdell Irving

served the fifth day
of September 1996 by the Plaintiff acting in
person, David Irving, 81 Duke Street,
Grosvenor Square, London W1M 5DJ

The
following footnotes -- which have necessarily
been renumbered here -- were offered in the
Work. The Plaintiff makes no complaint about
these footnotes except in so far as they may be
relied upon by the Defendants to lend a spurious
authenticity to the words complained
of:-

2 Ernst Nolte, "Between Myth and
Revisionism? The Third Reich in the Perspective
of the 1980s," in Aspects of the Third Reich,
ed. H.W. Koch (London, 1985) pp. 36-37.
Maier, The Unmasterable Past, p.29.

13 Robert Faurisson,
"Foreword," The Leuchter Report: The End of a
Myth: An Engineering Report on the Alleged
Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau,
and Majdanek, Poland (U.S.A.., 1988) p. 1,
(hereafter cited as Leuchter Report).